


such soft decay

by besselfcn



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Coming Untouched, Creepy Fluff, Eyes, M/M, Magnus Typical Imagery, Mention of Top Surgery Scars, Season 5 Spoilers, just like a lot of eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:01:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26274514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: Like dandelions that crawl upwards through the cracks in a city street, strands of something that look like they might be life push themselves up through splinters in the damp, dark earth.Martin knows this because he keeps finding them in his shoes.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/The Eye
Comments: 52
Kudos: 250





	such soft decay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sciencefictioness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencefictioness/gifts).



Sometimes when Martin lays on his back and stares at the sky — not sleeping, not even really resting, just _waiting_ , satisfying the primal itch in the back of his skull that still says _stop_ when he’s gone on too long — sometimes, then, the eye closes. 

Not for long. Well, not for any amount of time at all. But for an instant of perception, when he gazes up into that great, swirling eye that shifts and flows and twists around the clouds and hazy atmosphere in incomprehensible shapes, it shifts and shudders and seems to shut, taking all the static hum of the world with it. 

Then as quick as that it’s back, its kaleidoscope pupil stretching for miles. 

“Did you see that?” Martin asks Jon the first time, who laughs under his breath and then, when he realizes Martin’s not joking, furrows his brow. 

“See what?” he asks. 

Martin opens his mouth to answer, and finds he doesn’t know what to say.

“Nothing,” he says. “Never mind. Let’s get on.”

*

In the spaces in between the domains, the world is mostly empty.

But a mostly empty world still has things that try to survive in it. Like dandelions that crawl upwards through the cracks in a city street, strands of something that look like they might be life push themselves up through splinters in the damp, dark earth. 

Martin knows this because he keeps finding them in his shoes. 

No matter where they walk or how fast or slow or how often they stop, he finds something has crawled its way into his thick hiking boots. Little weeds that cling to his heels or blades of grass stuck between his toes. Once, when he stepped somewhere that he thought was _far_ outside the realm of the Corruption, wriggling pink earthworms sprouted underfoot and tried to crawl up his pant leg. It took him not an insignificant amount of shouting and some rather determined patting from Jon before he was convinced they all were gone. 

“This isn’t happening to you, is it?” Martin asks, after his third time nearly tripping because a root sprouted itself around his toes.

“No,” Jon says. His face is pinched, but something in the way he looks at Martin feels like the brink of understanding.

*

“Jon.”

“Mmm.”

“Could you look over there? And don’t… don’t freak out or anything.”

“Over — oh.”

“Is that a — “

“A wolf. Used to be. Perhaps.”

“Wolves don’t… I mean, that’s…”

“It’s the fear of a wolf. Claws and blood. Eyes and teeth.” 

Jon’s voice has gone all ominous again, so Martin ignores him and steps towards whatever the thing used to be. 

Martin’s mind wants it to be shaped like a wolf, so it is, in some way. A great dark shadow on the horizon, with blinking yellow eyes that coat its body snout to tail. From somewhere inside itself a mouth appears, great and yawning with teeth the size of Martin’s forearm. Dimly, Martin realizes he ought to be afraid. 

He gets closer. The thing shudders through the air to meet him. 

“Martin,” Jon says behind him, though not fearful or warning, just — the way he’d sound if Martin had left the kettle on in the kitchen, or if he couldn’t find his socks and wanted to know where Martin had put them.

“Hello,” Martin whispers.

The eyes pivot towards him in one great swooping motion. In the dark recesses of the shape, a tongue swirls out and wraps around Martin’s palm. 

“Oh,” Martin says. “Um. Good… boy?”

The eyes swirl in the other direction, and then the shape catches up to meet them there, and the fear-of-a-wolf is gone, disappeared into a boundless horizon. 

“Hmm,” Martin says. “Jon. What the fuck was that?”

Jon smiles a smile that is at once fond and impatient. “Not a clue,” he says, like it’s his greatest delight to say so.

*

When Martin was eleven, he and his mother took in a stray cat that was caught in a particularly horrible storm. 

For the first month it did nothing but hiss at them. He knew only that it ate because in the morning the food was gone, and in the evening the litter box was full. But he barely saw it, hidden away in corners and under beds. 

Eventually, it would sit in the same room as them, staring at them from a couple of meters away, just flicking its tail and making a dissatisfied face. Martin left treats out for it, halfway between himself and the cat. It dashed out to get them and then ran away somewhere to huddle over its meal, fearful he would take it away again. And this went on — Martin leaving it alone, presenting food and warmth to it, watching it disappear under the sofa as soon as he stretched out a hand in offering.

Martin remembered the first time he turned to look at it and it slowly, carefully, closed its eyes and blinked at him. 

“Oh,” his mother laughed. “Congratulations, Martin.”

“What do you mean,” he said.

“When they do that,” she told him, “it means they trust you enough not to have to watch you all the time.”

*

Jon kisses like he wants to swallow Martin whole. He is _starving_ , Martin thinks every time Jon gets his mouth on him — hungry for the warmth and safety that comes with latching teeth on to skin, digging in and leaving bruises and marks that nobody is around to find. Martin traverses the apocalypse with hickies strung round his neck like a rosary. 

Sex is infrequent — primarily because Jon is indifferent and Martin’s libido is not particularly fed by the squalid horrors of a world made of fear — but they get their mouths on each other as often as they can, drinking in years of lost sensation. Jon _likes_ to kiss, he tells Martin sheepishly, the first time Martin asks. It’s just he doesn’t particularly care whether there’s anything _more_. 

This is enough, Martin tells him: Jon’s face buried in his throat, his fingers dug into Martin’s wrists and pinning him to the earth. 

The air around them hums with static electricity. 

This is enough: Jon’s mouth on his chest, teeth skimming over old surgery scars. 

Something warm pools in the earth under Martin’s body, hot mud that draws him in, deeper, deeper, _deeper_. 

This is enough: Jon’s fingers in his mouth, pressing into his tongue to feel the warmth and heat that lays trapped there.

The sky fractures and melts, like sugar glass.

Martin shudders, his body pulsing with an orgasm he didn’t feel building but that suddenly wracks his body, even with Jon’s hands nowhere but the soft edges of his cheekbones. 

He opens his eyes and expects Jon to look shocked, or confused, or even to laugh. 

Jon, instead, looks satiated. 

*

“Should I still,” he starts, and then tries again, before he’s even started. “I mean. Ought I still be calling you Jon?”

Jon — his partner, his _boyfriend_ , whatever this thing that he loves is anymore — stops and turns towards him. “What?”

Martin exhales. His skin still feels cold and damp from the fog of the old Lukas house, but the look Jon gives him, incisive and bold, is warming him from the inside out. “I just mean,” he says, “everyone else we meet, you know, they call you _The Archivist_ , capital-T capital-A and all that. I just didn’t know whether — whether I should call you _Jon_. Or if you’re — I don’t know. If you don’t like that, or anything, I could… stop.”

The background hum of the world goes very still around them. The thing he calls Jon starts walking again, looking at the earth, and Martin scrambles to follow him. 

When he speaks, his voice is soft and droning, like he’s pouring out the words from some vessel rather than creating them as he speaks. “Is Peter Lukas the Lonely?” he asks. “Was Jane Prentiss the Corruption? Or Elias Bouchard — he was a pothead from York, at one stage in his life. Is he Jonah Magnus, now? Does it matter, if we call him that or if we call him Elias? Are you sure, after all that’s happened, all that we’ve seen and done, that you’re Martin Blackwood?”

Martin tries to listen to the crunching of earth underneath rather than the monologue, but somehow just then they both sound the same. 

“So,” he says, “should I start calling you The Eye, or… something?”

There’s silence, or as close as ever it gets to silence, now. Then a _hah_ — the quietest little laugh, achingly familiar. 

“It likes,” the used-to-be thing beside him says, “to be called _Jon_ by you.”

Martin sucks in a breath through his teeth. He feels the sky shuddering above him again, the warm heat curling through his stomach.

Then Jon blinks, and frowns. “I — Martin, I’m sorry, I don’t know what — “

“It’s fine,” Martin says, grasping out to take Jon’s hand. “Really. Jon. It’s fine.”

*

He is lying on his back. Jon is pacing, pacing, pacing, somewhere in the distance, muttering a statement to himself to take the edge off. 

The earth is crawling up to meet him; the sky is dipping down. His body sings and hums with the air around him, a quiet pulsing static that if he listens hard enough, if he stretches his fingers wide enough and presses his ear to the ground, he could swear is tuned in to the sloshing of his own heartbeat. 

Martin looks into the dark and swirling eye that feeds on the roaring panic of a world that is cradling him in its arms. 

Slowly, deliberately, he blinks. 

**Author's Note:**

> [blows a kiss to the apocalypse] for martin blackwood
> 
> Now with [incredible art](https://twitter.com/Squeebop/status/1310972435743809537) by Squeebop/DryDreams/Parker, the love of my life.
> 
> Find me on twitter [@besselfcn](https://twitter.com/besselfcn)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Such Soft Decay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26459386) by [DryDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DryDreams/pseuds/DryDreams)




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